Analysis of Vehicle Emissions 

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Analysis of Building Emissions

with PG&E DATA

Analysis

To begin with, let’s combine both previous parts of this analysis to compared their impact and gage the gravity of the current situation.

Electric Vehicles

GHG emission trends in California

Taking a step further back and looking at California as a whole, here are some interesting GHG emission trends.

Let’s start with as broad as can be - here is a plot showing total GHG emission and per capita. We can see how predominant transportation is, which is in line with the previous findings comparing vehicles to buildings. After that is industry, followed by electric power which has been decreasing significantly.

Now, let’s look into the subcategories within transportation.

From this graph, we can really see how the most contributing type of transportation are Passenger Vehicles. What is tricky about this category is the common question “Who’s responsibility is this then?” and nothing really gets done. That said, as we have seen, Electric Vehicle adoption has been steadily increasing (although not significantly enough to justify this recent drop shown in the graph). This data is one more indicator of the huge potential this solution has to create a significant impact.

Finally, looking a bit more into building emissions in California over the same time period, 2013 to 2019. This source provides an interesting breakdown between housing and commercial spaces and their emissions per sqft.

It is important to note that Emissions per housing unit do not take square footage into account while commercial floor space in divided by square foot which allows for a better average across disparate levels of sustainability across different buildings.

While commercial purpose buildings show less volatility in their emissions compared to housing units, none really show improvement or consistency across these years. One potential reason for this could be that although newer buildings are reducing their emissions, there are so many less technologically advanced buildings still in use so we can’t see a difference yet.

Concluding Thoughts